Himself

A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that refers to another noun or pronoun (its antecedent) within the same sentence.

In the English language specifically, a reflexive pronoun will end in ''-self'' or ''-selves'', and refer to a previously named noun or pronoun (''myself'', ''yourself'', ''ourselves'', ''themselves'', etc.). English intensive pronouns, used for emphasis, take the same form.

In generative grammar, a reflexive pronoun is an anaphor that must be bound by its antecedent (see binding). In a general sense, it is a noun phrase that obligatorily gets its meaning from another noun phrase in the sentence. Different languages have different binding domains for reflexive pronouns, according to their structure.

Origins and usage

In Indo-European languages, the reflexive pronoun has its origins in Proto-Indo-European. In some languages, some distinction exists between normal object and reflexive pronouns, mainly in the third person: whether one says "I like me" or "I like myself", there is no question that the object is the same person as the subject; but, in "They like them(selves)", there can be uncertainty about the identity of the object unless a distinction exists between the reflexive and the nonreflexive. In some languages, this distinction includes genitive forms: see, for instance, the Danish examples below. In languages with a distinct reflexive pronoun form, it is often gender-neutral.

A reflexive pronoun is normally used when the object of a sentence is the same as the subject. Each personal pronoun (such as ''I'', ''you'', ''he'' and ''she'') has its own reflexive form:

* ''I — myself''
* ''you — yourself/yourselves''
* ''he — himself''
* ''she — herself''
* ''one — oneself''
* ''it — itself''
* ''we — ourselves''
* ''they — themself/themselves''

These pronouns can also be used ''intensively'', to emphasize the identity of whoever or whatever is being talked about:

* Jim bought himself a book (reflexive)
* Jim himself bought a book (intensive)

Intensive pronouns usually appear near and/or before the subject of the sentence.

Usually after prepositions of locality it is preferred to use a personal object pronoun rather than a reflexive pronoun:

* Close the door ''after you.'' (NOT ''... after yourself.'')
* He was pulling a small cart ''behind him.'' (NOT ''... behind himself.'')
* She took her dog ''with her.'' (NOT ... ''with herself.'')

Compare:

* She's very pleased ''with herself.'' (NOT ... ''with her.'')

Certain verbs have reflexive pronouns in some languages but not in English:

* Do you ''shave'' on Sundays? (NOT Do you ''shave yourself'' on Sundays?)
* Try to ''concentrate.'' (NOT Try to ''concentrate yourself'')
* I ''feel'' strange''.'' (NOT I ''feel myself'' strange.)

Compare to French:

* (''te'' is the second person singular reflexive pronoun in French, but it can serve as an object pronoun)
*
*

The list of such verbs:

* ''complain, concentrate, get up/hot/tired, lie down, meet, relax, remember, sit down, wake up, shave, undress, wash, acclimatise, adapt, behave, hide, move...''

Non-reflexive usage in English

Non-reflexive use of reflexive pronouns is rather common in English. Most of the time, reflexive pronouns function as emphatic pronouns that highlight or emphasize the individuality or particularity of the noun. Grammatically, the position of reflexive pronouns in this usage is either right after the noun the pronouns are emphasizing or, if the noun is subject, after-verb-or-object position is also possible. For example, "Why don't you ''yourself'' do the job?", "Why don't you do the job ''yourself''?", or "I want to fix my phone ''itself''; I will not fix your watch as well."

Some speakers use reflexive pronouns without local linguistic antecedents to refer to discourse participants or people already referenced in a discourse: for example, "Please, forward the information to ''myself'', Anything else for ''yourself'' today?". (Note that ''me'' and ''you'' would be more concise in such instances.) Within the linguistics literature, reflexives with discourse antecedents are often referred to as logophors. Standard English allows use of logophors in some contexts: for example, "John was angry. Embarrassing pictures of himself were on display." However, within Standard English, this logophoric use of reflexives is generally limited to positions where the reflexive does not have a coargument. The newer non-standard usage does not respect this limitation. In some cases, reflexives without local antecedents may be better analyzed as emphatic pronouns without any true reflexive sense.

It is common in some dialects of English to use standard object pronouns to express reflexive relations, especially in the first and sometimes second persons, and especially for a recipient: for example, "I want to get me some supper." While this was seemingly standard in Old English through the Early Modern Period (with "self" constructs primarily used for emphatic purposes), it is held to be dialectal or nonstandard in Modern English.

It is also common in informal speech to use ''myself'' in a conjunctive phrase when 'me' would suffice: "She stood by Jane and myself." Also ''myself'' is used when 'I' would be more appropriate; for example, Thomas Jefferson was quoted as saying, "Hamilton and myself were daily pitted in the cabinet like two cocks."

In languages other than English

Chinese

In Mandarin Chinese, the reflexive pronoun is , meaning "self". The antecedent it refers to can be inferred by context, which is generally the subject of the sentence:

* 。(''Ill take care of ''(my)self''.)
* 。(Take care of ''(your)self''.)

The antecedent can be reiterated before the reflexive pronoun; this can be used to refer to an antecedent that's not the subject:

* 。(I gave him ''his own'' book.)
* 。(I gave him ''my own'' book.)

Like English, the reflexive can also be used to emphasize the antecedent:

* 。(''He'' took it ''(him)self''.)

The reflexive can also be the subject of an embedded clause.

* 。 (''He'' considers ''(him)self'' very clever. ''He'' feels that ''he'' is very clever.)

Also unlike English, the reflexive can refer to antecedents outside of the embedded clause. Because of this, it may be ambiguous whether the antecedent refers to the subject of the main clause or the embedded clause, in which case it may be necessary to reiterate the antecedent:

* 。(I feel that ''Mr. Wang'' likes you more than he likes ''(him)self''.)
* 。(I feel that ''Mr. Wang'' likes you more than he likes ''myself''.)

The reflexive pronoun in Cantonese Chinese, ''jihgéi'', cognate to Mandarin ''zìjǐ'' (and thus also written as ), also follows the same rules. This was also the case in Classical Chinese, which simply used (Old Chinese: *''kəʔ'').

Danish

Danish uses the separate reflexive pronoun ''sig'' for third person pronouns, and 'selv' to mark intensive.

* (''I protect myself'')

In Danish, there is also a difference between normal and reflexive genitives, the latter being used only in the singular:

* (Anna gave Maria her 'Maria's, or possibly some unknown third person's''book.)
* (Anna gave Maria her 'Anna's''book.)

In the latter case, sin is a case of a ''reflexive possessive pronoun'', i.e. it reflects that the subject in the phrase (Anna) owns the object (the book).

Esperanto

The Esperanto third-person reflexive pronoun is , or for the possessive (to which can be added ''-j'' for plural agreement and ''-n'' for direct object).

* (''He reads his (someone else's) books.'')

French

In French, the main reflexive pronoun is , with its indefinite form .

There are also intensifying reflexive pronouns, such as , , , , and , similar in meaning (but not often used) to myself, yourself, etc.

French also uses reflexive verbs to express actions that somebody is doing to themselves. Many of these are related to daily routine. For example,

* (I get washed, lit "I wash myself")

German

In German, the reflexive case is not distinguishable from the accusative and dative cases except in the third person reflexive. As discussed above, the reflexive case is most useful when handling third person because it is not always clear that pronouns refer to the same person, whereas in the first and second persons, it is clear: ''he hit him'' and ''he hit himself'' have different meanings, but ''I hit me'' and ''I hit myself'' mean the same thing although the former is nonstandard English.

Because the accusative and dative cases are different, the speaker must know whether the verb is reflexive accusative or reflexive dative. There are very few reflexive dative verbs, which must be memorised to ensure that the correct grammar is used. The most notable one is (to hurt oneself): (I hurt myself.) See also German pronouns.

Hindi/Urdu

In Hindi, there are two primary reflexive pronouns, the reflexive pronoun () rom PIE meaning "self" and pronoun () PII "self"">Proto-Indo-Iranian_language.html" ;"title="rom Proto-Indo-Iranian language">PII "self"which is the possessive reflexive pronoun and both these pronouns are used with all the three, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, persons. There is also the pronoun () which is used with either the inessive case-marker () forming the reflexive pronoun () meaning "among ourselves" or the genitive postpostion () forming the reflexing pronoun () meaning "of ourselves". The genitive reflexive pronoun can also be used to emphasise when used with the personal genitive pronouns, so e.g. () "mine" becomes () "my very own". Alternatively, using the genitive postposition () with () gives () meaning the same as ().
These reflexive pronouns can be used with case-marking postpositions as shown below in the table to the right.

Hungarian

* . (I talk about ''myself''.)

Icelandic

There is only one reflexive pronoun in Icelandic and that is the word ''wikt:en:sig#Icelandic">sig''. It does not differ between grammatical gender">genders